2 comments:

I was just reading about unions in higher education in the book, "The Last Professors," which indicates that it operates on a state-by-state basis. There is a famous court case around 1980 in which Yeshiva University professors wanted to unionize, but the court declared that the professors were "managers" rather than "workers" and, therefore, could not organize.

At state schools, organization, like I said, is state-by-state. Some states have no legislation to address such issues, and, therefore, the professors have no legal backing to organize. Whereas in others, they can. Most of the time, however, when there is unionization, it primarily occurs among temporary instructors--visiting instructors, adjuncts, non-tenure track instructors, etc.

A few years back, NYU organized--the non-tenured professors and the TAs. But I think their union was dissolved or has lost a lot of momentum in a recent House of Representatives ruling that removed the right to organize or organization would be at the mercy of the university administration in private universities like NYU and Columbia (this is when the House was still dominated by Reps, and the issue has not been reexamined under the current Democratic majority).

About Me

I have a Ph.D. in Religion from Columbia University. I am a visiting assistant professor at Illinois College. I have also taught at the University of Mississippi, Illinois Wesleyan University, and Columbia University. My research focuses on the New Testament and emergent Christian interactions with ancient Judaism in their Greco-Roman and ancient Near Eastern environments.